Republicans are scrutinizing Scranton, Pennsylvania’s Democratic mayor Paige Cognetti’s track record with a new microsite.
The microsite, details of which were obtained exclusively by the Washington Reporter, is from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and dubs Cognetti “Machete Cognetti,” referencing a series of high-profile violent crimes that have taken place under her watch.
The NRCC hones in on a tragic incident in which a man murdered two women and a service dog with a machete in Scranton in December 2025. Cognetti, in a recent interview, downplayed Scranton’s rise in crime, saying that it is “relatively low compared to what, unfortunately, some cities suffer.”
“I don’t want to overshoot in terms of saying that this is an unprecedented crisis,” she said amid the rise in crime. In 2020, Cognetti said that she would like to see Scranton as a city where police officers do not carry firearms.
The NRCC’s “Machete Cognetti” site features a series of headlines that voters in Pennsylvania’s 8th District, which is currently represented by Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R., Pa.), will likely see in the months before November’s elections. Among them are “Scranton man faces burglary, indecent assault charges”; “Man charged with aggravated assault after girlfriend hit by car, dies in Scranton”; “Member of the city’s Human Relations Commission faces multiple charges”; “Scranton man severely beat another man, tried to clean up blood”; and “Scranton man choked, threatened ill mother.”
The NRCC’s Reilly Richardson told the Reporter ahead of the site’s launch that “political opportunist Paige Cognetti’s soft-on-crime policies have put Scranton families in the crosshairs of a violent crime wave. Unfortunately for Pennsylvanians, Cognetti is too busy focusing on her personal vanity congressional campaign to care.”
Across the country, Republicans are looking to tie Democrats to violent crime that happens on their watch. The Senate GOP’s Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) launched a “Felon Friday” campaign to “highlight one of the 3,500 criminals [North Carolina Senate candidate Roy] Cooper released early from prison and the danger Cooper brought to North Carolina’s neighborhoods.”
In a recent profile of a criminal let out by Cooper, SLF noted that “convicted murderers, rapists, and other violent criminals like Shannone McClintick are now roaming freely through North Carolina communities because of Roy Cooper’s soft-on-crime agenda.”
